North Bay Science Festival

This fall, the North Bay will host its first annual Science Festival featuring a week of free activities and programs for people of all ages. Programs will feature hands-on- activities, provocative conversations, electrifying performances, and tours of cutting-edge facilities. The festival is funded in part by the National Science Foundation in order to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Science is heading out of the lab and into the community for all to enjoy!

Events around the North Bay support this Bay Area festival. Home to a broad range of scientific research facilities, environmental laboratories, innovators and entrepreneurs, sustainable agriculture, wetlands  restoration projects and many other remarkable scientific endeavors, the Festival will celebrate these assets and inspire residents to prize and protect them.

After a week of activities, the North Bay Science Festival culminates with Discovery Day at Infineon Raceway on Saturday, November 5, 2011. This showcase for the North Bay’s science assets provides residents with hands-on experiences to ignite the imagination and introduce the fun side of science with amazing experiments and projects for families. The free Discovery Day anticipates 5,000 attendees and is expected to receive wide media attention.

Brian Kennedy, CEO of the Buck Institute for Age Research, said “Please help us show North Bay families that science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are interesting, fun, and hold promising local careers for future generations. Our aim is to inspire STEM careers to build a globally competitive workforce and increase the economic vitality of the North Bay.”

The North Bay Science Festival is under the umbrella of the Bay Area Science Festival which is coordinated by the University of California at San Francisco. In the North Bay, the Marin and Sonoma Supervisors, the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and the North Bay Leadership Council are coming together to launch this annual Festival. The initiative is also supported by the National Science Foundation. Successful Science Festivals have already taken place in San Diego, New York, and Boston.

Please visit http://www.bayareascience.org/festival for more information, or contact Melinda Pahl, project coordinator, at Education@BuckInstitute.org or (415) 454-3652.